Saturday, 10 October 2015

Brown Ale in 1960

With draught Mild out of the way we can move on to bottled Dark Mild, or Brown Ale as it was usually called.

Though I should be careful about saying that. Not every beer in the tables below is a bottled Mild. Or something similar. There are some quite different stylistically. But we’ll get onto that later.

Starting with the Which? samples seems the logical place to start. They aren’t a very alcoholic bunch. Far from it. Only a couple are over 3% ABV and the average is below it. The strongest of the bunch, Double Maxim, wasn’t even classed as a Brown Ale but was lumped with the bottled Pale Ales. Of the ones they considered Brown Ales, only the Carlisle State Management example scrapes past 1040º.

The gravities are mostly in the low 1030’s, much like draught Mild. But the rate of attenuation is much lower, averaging 65% compared to almost 75%. That’s quite a difference considering they’re very similar, or in some cases actually the same, beer. That was certainly the case of Whitbread’s Forest Brown which was the same beer as Best Ale. Only one has attenuation over 70% and that’s the one beer that’s different from the others: Double Maxim.

It looks as if drinkers liked their Brown Ales sweet. Even sweeter than Mild. This is borne out by the bitterness levels, which average to one point lower than Mild. The combination of light hopping and high FG must have left them drinking pretty sweet and quite full for the gravity.

Looking at value for money, Double Maxim is a clear winner. It’s only a little more expensive for its ABV than draught Mild. Surprisingly, Brown Ale is on average worse value than bottled Light Ale and bottled Pale Ale, which both came to about 6.5. I can’t understand why that should be.

Moving on to the Gravity Book examples, you can see that they are a more diverse bunch. The majority are still of the bottled Mild type, but there are also some that are quite different. There’s a stronger type consisting of Bass, Newcastle Brown and Federation. The latter two are intended to be similar, I’m sure. And the Bass one probably filled a similar niche. The all have reasonable to high attenuation.

The real outlier is Websters Old Brown, which you may recall began life as a Coronation Ale. Strong, dark and heavy. I wouldn’t mind a pint of that now. I’d guess that it was parti-gyled with their Sam Brown Ale.

There’s a similar variation in colour, ranging from not really brown at all (Brickwood) to near black (Strong). Though the average is typical in the Dark Mild country of 80 to 90.

Federation comes out as best value for money. Not really much of a shock. Clubs breweries kept prices low. And their Brown Ale is also quite well attenuated, which helps. It even manages to be better value than one of the draught Milds. At the other end of the scale is Atkinson’s Brown Ale, which costs double per 1% ABV.

Brown Ale in 1960

Brewer

Beer

Price
per pint d

OG

FG

ABV

App.
Atten-uation

Index of Hop Bitter

price per % ABV

Ansells

Nut Brown Ale

17

1032.9

1010.5

2.90

68.09%

20

5.87

Ushers

Brown Ale

18

1032.3

1010.7

2.80

67.03%

22

6.43

Friary Meux

Brown Ale

20

1030.2

1011.6

2.40

61.59%

19

8.33

Tolly
Cobblold

Country Brown Ale

20

1031.5

1012.2

2.50

61.43%

23

8.01

Strong

Rumsey Brown

20

1032.1

1009.7

2.90

69.78%

20

6.90

Watney

Brown Ale

20

1032.1

1011.2

2.70

65.11%

16

7.40

Greene King

Burton Ale

20

1033.4

1011.7

2.80

64.97%

16

7.13

Truman

Trubrown Brown Ale

20

1034.7

1013.8

2.70

60.23%

27

7.42

Truman

Trubrown Brown Ale

20

1035.2

1015.1

2.60

57.24%

25

7.70

Simonds

Berry Brown Ale

20

1035.1

1015.7

2.50

55.27%

20

8.00

Carlisle
State Management

Nut Brown Ale

20

1040.6

1012.8

3.60

68.60%

20

5.55

Fremlins

Double Elephant Brown
Ale

21

1033.4

1011

2.90

67.07%

17

7.25

Courage &
Barclay

'Doctor' Brown Ale

21

1034.7

1013

2.80

62.54%

26

7.49

Whitbread

Forest Brown

21

1035.5

1012.3

3.00

65.35%

28

7.00

Georges

Brown Ale

22

1035.1

1011.9

3.00

66.10%

20

7.34

Vaux

Double Maxim

24

1047.4

1009.8

4.90

79.43%

40

4.90

Average

20.3

1034.8

1012.0

2.94

64.99%

22.4

7.05

Source:

Which Beer Report, 1960, pages 171 - 173.

Brown Ale 1959 - 1961

Brewer

Beer

Price
per pint d

OG

FG

ABV

App.
Atten-uation

colour

price per % ABV

Ansell

Bruno Sweet Brown
Ale

23

1034.4

1013.6

2.68

60.47%

90

8.57

Atkinson's

Brown Ale

26

1037

1016.5

2.64

55.41%

95

9.85

Bass

Brown Ale

36

1052.9

1015.6

4.84

70.51%

105

7.44

Brickwoods

Brown Ale

24

1041.1

1013.9

3.52

66.18%

19

6.82

Hammonds

Brown Jack Ale

20

1034.7

1009.3

3.18

73.20%

70

6.30

Newcastle
Breweries

Brown Ale

32

1052.2

1012.1

5.22

76.82%

50

6.13

Tennant Bros.

Lion Brown Ale

23

1035.1

1009.2

3.24

73.79%

75

7.10

Tomson &
Wotton

Tom Brown Ale

1033.5

1014

2.51

58.21%

110

Websters

Old Brown

46.5

1071.4

1023.1

6.27

67.65%

110

7.42

Websters

Sam Brown Ale

18

1036.8

1011.1

3.33

69.84%

95

5.41

Hancock,
Cardiff

Nut Brown

1033

Northern
Clubs Federation

Federation Brown Ale

23

1051.4

1010.4

5.13

79.77%

70

4.49

Newcastle
Breweries

Brown Ale

30

1051.4

1008.2

5.40

84.05%

50

5.56

Strong

Rumsey Brown

21

1032.3

1010

2.79

69.04%

140

7.53

Truman

Keg Brown

18

1033.5

1007

3.44

79.10%

90

5.23

Whitbread

Forest Brown

1033.0

1008.0

3.31

75.76%

100

Average

25.4

1041.5

1012.1

3.83

70.65%

84.6

6.76

Source:

Whitbread Gravity book held at the London Metropolitan
Archives, document number LMA/4453/D/02/002.

Whitbread brewing record held at the London Metropolitan
Archives, document number LMA/4453/D/01/127.

Stout next. Where I’ll be banging one of my favourite drums very loudly again.

1 comment:

Anonymous
said...

It's interesting to me that in the US somehow "nut" brown ale became a specific category when you see all of the different adjectives used - Lion, Berry, Trubrown, Country.... The brewers clearly would be baffled by the way Nut became a clearcut signifier.

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